Tag Archives: advertising

Web advertising vs micropayments

Right now, if you do a Google search for a product like an iPhone, above the link to Apple.com you will see ads to purchase a phone. Those ads are how Google makes its money.

Meanwhile, if the search you are doing isn’t a product, but an idea or concept, then those ads aren’t always about selling something, but rather about sharing content… and that content is usually surrounded by advertising. That’s how a website gets you to look at ads on their page, how they get advertisers to pay them for views and clicks on their pages. This race for your attention is not free, and what you see on the internet, at the top of searches, and on websites next to, above and below, the content you want to see is the price we all pay… the price of our attention.

I think that there is going to be a social media platform that will show up in the next few years that is going to figure out micropayments as a means to share ad-free content. Want to see a news article with no ads? Pay 1/10th of a cent. Find a great article you really enjoyed? Give them a hand clap or two (applause of some sort), each worth 1/10th of a cent. If you really like it, you can share 10 X of your applause… or a whole penny. Enjoying some art shared or creative writing? You decide how much applause to give.

You’ll have people not paying much, but others will be generous. And along with this will come a culture of disliking sites that embed advertising. We will see a lot more ad-free content. News sites might insist on a micropayment. The challenge is how to get people to ‘buy in’ to paying rather than seeing ads. I think this will happen with a social media platform that does 2 things:

1. Charges about $10 to join.

2. Gives you 9,500 ‘points’ to give away. (10,000 times 1/10 of a cent minus a 50 cent or 500 point fee.)

Basically, you will be given the points to give away through applause for websites you like. Because these points will be called something fun besides 1/10th of a cent, and because you get so many of them, you’ll think nothing of sharing a few of them on content you like. When you run low on them, you can purchase another $5, $10, or $20 more, but with a decreasing commission:

$5 gets you 4,250 points

$10 gets you 9,500 points

$20 gets you 19,700 points

The sweet spot will be $10, which isn’t a lot of money if the points last the typical person more than a month.

Some people will use their points miserly, others will spend over $20 a month. Overall, an economy of paying, or rather ‘applauding’ content that is shred ad-free will become something people are happy to do.

It will be interesting to see how micropayments will influence the content that is shared. Will we see sites begging for applause? Viral videos earning more money than advertising could ever get them? Sites donating their applause to charity? There are many ways this format could go, but I think one thing you will see is a genuine hate for websites that share ads embedded in content… and I’m looking forward to this!

Manipulation and Engagement

Spend an hour and a half watching Social Dilemma on Netflix.

The section on fake news about an hour into the show is truly alarming. Fake news travels 6 times faster and further on Twitter than real news. Think about that as a battle against or for Truth. It’s an unfair fight.

Polarization is growing because polarized messages feed the attention algorithms better than centrist views and ideas.

Your social media feed isn’t designed to give you what others get, it’s catered to keep your attention. Your attention is the product. Social media sites vie for that attention and then sell it to the highest bidder… and the highest bidders are not just shoe companies and consumables, the highest bidders are wanting to influence the next video you see, and the next idea that moves your thinking where they want.

If you use social media, you are not in control of your own attention.

When bad ideas go viral

A decade ago viral videos went viral organically. People shared videos, these went into other people’s timelines, and they shared it too. This can still happen on Twitter, to a small extent, but not on Facebook. Facebook viral videos only happen through advertising dollars. Even that cute cat video doesn’t spread unless it is pushed through. The next time you see a viral video with million of views on Facebook, take the time to notice three things:

First, notice that he video was uploaded to Facebook. It’s not a YouTube or Vimeo embedded video, it’s actually a video that was saved on Facebook. This is so that they can fully track, and have advertisers pay for, engagement.

Second, notice that the video will have some branding on it: A website logo or emblem of some kind. It is being promoted by a company or organization.

Third, notice if it is from someone that you regularly see in your timeline. Your timeline used to be every post from every person you follow, now your timeline is curated and you see some people more than others… but when a friend that’s seldom seen in your curated list shares a paid-for/promoted video, suddenly you see their post in your timeline again.

This becomes dangerous when the information shared is false. Here are two specific examples where this is scary right now:

1. Anti-vaccination propaganda: vaccines have made our world a significantly safer place. Hopefully there will be a vaccine for Covid-19 soon, but the reality is that millions of people will likely opt out of taking it and the virus could linger for years, mutating and making the very vaccine useless. Measles have had a resurgence because less people around the world or vaccinating their kids.

2. False claims about Covid-19 cures and anti-mask groups are undermining the science behind fighting this virus. The most recent viral video, taken down by Facebook, has a doctor espousing how she has cured over 300 Covid-19 patients with Hydroxychloroquine. I wrote about this drug as a treatment for covid-19 here: Trying to find the Truth

It’s one thing to say a drug is useful in helping treat an ailment and yet another to claim it is a cure or somehow preventative (like a vaccination).

I’ve had an argument with some very smart people that think Facebook should not take down videos like this because ‘people should be able to watch them and make their own decisions’. Maybe I’d have agreed with them a decade ago, because the video would have to spread organically and people could share their concerns along with the video. But today, that video will get millions of viewers targeted through advertising dollars to promote bad ideas. And advertisers with their own agendas will feed the video to people most likely to agree and share it with support.

This isn’t an organic process. It’s marketplace advertising being used to market and sell bad ideas, entice anger, and polarize opinions and perspectives. Even the taking down of the video has become polarized with the ‘Leftist social media sites only taking down videos they don’t agree with.’ …suddenly this is about politics and not about the spreading of dangerous ideas.

There are a lot of bad ideas being intentionally spread right now. The scary part of this is that these bad ideas are going viral through advertising dollars spent with an agenda to create anger, divisiveness, and the polarization of people.

And while I’ve focused on anti-vaccines and Covid-19 cures, media outlets have used fake (or carefully edited) protest videos to entice anger and gain clicks and advertising revenue, and used language to specifically pander to specific audiences. The desire to share messages virally has made it so that almost any (newsworthy) viral video you see will likely be one that has an agenda, and that agenda is seldom to give you the truth.

Ask yourself who is behind the next viral video you see, then ask yourself what their agenda is?

The Netflix Trap

Despite the fact that I grew up in the era of Seinfeld and Friends being sitcoms that were on the air, I haven’t seen all of the episodes. My daughters have seen every episode in order, and my youngest daughter is on her 3rd round of watching Friends through all 10 seasons, or 236 episodes, on Netflix.

When I watched these shows, they were on TV, with commercials, and we didn’t have a VCR set up if we missed the time slot. By the time the reruns were on, I was already not a fan of waiting through commercials to watch a show.

This weekend I got sucked into a drama on Netflix, and still nursing an injured knee, I found myself in front of the television for hours. I fell deep into the Netflix trap watching the next episode, after the next episode, after the next episode. ‘OK, just 1 more,’ I’d tell myself, then just one more after that…

I do this sometimes on longer breaks like summer and Christmas break but it’s very rare that I sink into a series like this on a regular weekend. The appeal is strong when there are no commercials and the opening/closing credits can easily be skipped. There is no waiting until next week’s time slot on TV, no waiting for commercials either. Just show after show, with each ending designed to hook you into the next one.

Watching television has changed significantly. I can see how easy it is to stay trapped in front of it now in a way that wasn’t possible when I was younger. YouTube and Facebook can be the same for some, with the next video automatically playing after the one you are watching is done. Blink and several hours have gone by.

I had a good dose of this on the weekend, and I’m done for now… At least until the March break. The series I was watching has one more season and I’ll probably watch most of it in a two to three day span. I force myself to wait for an extended break. But when I start, I don’t pretend that I’m not easily sucked into the trap of binge watching, like many others.

Fed up with the news

I don’t watch the news, don’t listen to the radio, but I want to know what’s happening in the world. So I do two things on my phone, first I have the news App and Flipgrid set up on my phone… swipe right from my home screen and there are the headlines. Then there is always the search feature on the Twitter App with the news column.

I don’t spend a lot of time going past the headlines, but I do look a little deeper when major events happen. I also admit to metaphorically slowing down to see the accident at the side of the road, when a certain political leader tweets something outrageous, but the line between news and entertainment blurs here. It would be fully laughable if it wasn’t so unsettling.

This news-through-headlines (and trending hashtags) approach keeps me away from the painful aspects of the news that I’m fed up with, such as:

1. Headlines that belong in Tabloids such as, “This Facebook Post Almost Broke The Internet.” Or: “12 Products You Can’t Live Without.”

2. An overemphasis on Hollywood stars, musicians, and royalty.

3. An embarrassingly morbid focus on the macabre: Shootings, tragedies, and death.

But even this approach doesn’t allow me from escaping the idiocy of the news as described in this tweet:

It doesn’t stop the glorification of horrible people.

It doesn’t prevent me from seeing an onslaught of negative headlines about tragedies around the world.

Yes, some tragedies are relevant to the world, and a few need to make the headlines. But it’s time for news outlets to think of the turmoil and upset they leave behind when they use a ‘If it bleeds, it leads’ attitude. It’s time for news outlets to stop creating click bait titles. It’s time for news outlets to realize the influence they have, and to be more concerned with their influence, and less concerned about getting our attention at any cost.

In the mean time, I’ll try to do my part and avoid clicking on links that I think undermine valuable news sharing for the sake of one more view of advertising on a web page.

2020 Vision – 3 predictions

Here are ways that I think digital content and content sharing are going to change in 2020:

1. More subscription-based online content without commercials.

Ad revenue sites will not be able to compete. This is the perfect time for a good micro-payment site to come along (imagine Medium blogs, but a ‘clap’ (or ‘Like’) is a 1 or 5 cent donation, or think of Twitch, which already has audiences paying for people to share content). However, while subscriptions for content will grow significantly, micro-payments will only just start to get a foothold in 2020.

2. Privacy concerns will reshape what and how we share.

Google and Facebook will both see dips in revenue and growth because people will choose to not search signed in (or choose to use private search like DuckDuckGo or private browsers like Brave). Facebook will have more advertising based/click-bait sharing, but less personal sharing. People won’t be complaining about privacy as much as just being cautious about what they share, and consciously sharing less personal information.

3. There is going to be an explosion of paid content infomercials.

You will be reading an article and suddenly there is a product placement you were not expecting. For example, in #1 above I mentioned Medium blogs and Twitch, and in #2 I mentioned DuckDuckGo and Brave. I could also have added links to them with a detailed sentences or a paragraph about them, intentionally ‘selling’ them as part of this post. Product placement within blog and news articles will be the new equivalent of the banner ad.

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I have not been a fan of paywalls and content hidden for subscription only, but I think that good, commercial free content will cost money in the future. You will either pay for the content, or you will give up personal information, or you will see imbedded advertising hidden in the content you read. Creators of good content are going to start providing teaser content where you either subscribe to see more, or just click to accept a micropayment to continue.

The advertising model will adapt and there will be even more click bait articles, but instead of making you click 10 pages to see 10 photos of some ‘amazing’ list surrounded by advertising, you will see the first 2 then pay 1-5 cents to see the next 8. We will still need to be discerning consumers if we want to get to the good content we are interested in, and we will have to be willing to pay a bit to continue reading, listening, or watching.